For many years, passenger automobiles and light trucks have been offered by manufacturers with the selection of either manual or automatic transmission systems. Traditionally, automatic and manual transmissions have been fabricated in two separate manufacturing facilities, each of which is provided with at least some equipment that is dedicated to the manufacture of that type transmission. In addition to the dedicated equipment, each facility is required to maintain an "over-capacity" in order effectively to handle fluctuations in consumer demand for the version of the transmission manufactured at that facility. Therefore, the combined capacity of the two facilities exceeds the reasonably anticipated overall demand volume.
Typically, dedicated manufacturing operations--i.e.: those having virtually no flexibility and being dedicated to the production of one specific part or assemblage of parts--are more cost-effective than modestly flexible operations. In fact, experience has shown that flexible processing is impractical unless a high degree of flexibility is required. Factors which, when appropriate, suggest the need for highly flexible manufacturing facilities include: the need to cope with products and processes that are normally upgraded or routinely changed over time; and, the space and personnel requirements attendant upon the use of a dedicated rather than a flexible manufacturing facility are burdensome.
In addition, the need to maintain over-capacity ability at more than one dedicated facility is a chief factor contributing to the need for a consolidated, flexible manufacturing facility. Clearly, a flexible assembly line for providing both manual and automatic transmission systems would have a significant cost advantage over providing those systems at two separate, dedicated facilities, particularly when either, or both, must maintain an over-capacity capability.
Accordingly, it has been desired to develop a more flexible manufacturing system which is capable of producing any mix of automatic and manual transmissions to meet the demand-volume without the need to maintain over-capacity facilities, but a major stumbling block in the development of a flexible facility for the assembly of manual and automatic transmissions has been the extensive differences between the conventional configurations of manual and automatic transmission systems. Such differences exist with respect to case length, end-cover geometry, center distances between operating shafts (and the resulting bearing bore locations), bell housing lengths, clutch/synchronizer arrangements, and the transmission controls, to name but a few. Thus, it can be seen that one is faced with a monumental task to develop a flexible system which would be capable of handling a mix of manual and automatic transmissions.